Archive for March, 2006

Kasian Tejapira’s Commodifying Marxism: a review

Published on March 26, 2006 in Marxism, Communism, Thailand, Book review and History. 0 Comments

Kasian Tejapira, Commodifying Marxism: The Formation of Modern Thai Radical Culture, 1927-1958. (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2001).Commodifying Marxism

Kasian Tejapira, in his work Commodifying Marxism, examines the history of the translation and dissemination of politically radical texts and ideas in Thailand in the period of 1927 to 1958. Communism entered Siam, a “singularly uncolonized absolute monarchy” (3), not from the West but from the East, through Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants. The anti-communism of the Thai monarchy predated the emergence of communist ideas in Siam. This allowed the monarchy to define an ethno-ideological notion of Thainess that excluded communist rhetoric as inherently foreign. For the lookjin (Thai-born Chinese) communists struggled to overcome this ethno-ideological barrier, and to function as both Thai and communist. The ””Thaification”” of the lookjin communists resulted from their cohabitation in prison with the Thai Bowardej politicos, from the legalization of the communist party, and, above all, from the struggle against the Japanese invasion. Through an extended use of the analytical concept of market forces, Kasian traces the translation, dissemination and circulation of Marxist-communist concepts and texts in Thailand. In an ironic dependence upon capitalist market forces, Marxist texts, Kasian argues, were supplied to the burgeoning demand for radical political literature. This market mechanism, at once effectively distributed these ideas and transformed - ”commodified” - them.

Kasian’s work highlights many fascinating moments in the history of Communism in Southeast Asia from a Thai perspective. His notes are extensive and contain occasional gems. That said, I would argue that his account founders upon the shoals of a self-congratulatory cleverness.

His work is worthy of its subtitle; here is an account of the “Formation of Modern Thai Radical Culture, 1927-1958.” The title - Commodifying Marxism - which forms the organizing argument of Kasian’s text, on the other hand, is imminently disputable. It is unclear that commodification actually occurs. It is not at all apparent that it is Marxism which is ”commodified.” Even if the questionable adjective could be tied to the equally questionable noun, it is uncertain what exactly is uniquely Thai about any of this.

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Magnifico

Published on March 24, 2006 in film review. 0 Comments

Blanche and I enjoyed a movie together yesterday evening: Maryo de los Reyes” Magnifico. The film was released in the Philippines in late 2002, and has subsequently received considerable international acclaim.

A New York Times review accurately called the film a “modest but engaging Filipino tear-jerker.” Magnifico tells the story of a Filipino family in Laguna struggling to survive from the perspective of a young boy named Magnifico. His kuya, older brother, has lost his scholarship to study in Manila; his little sister suffers from cerebral palsy.

The family learns that their Lola, grandmother, has advanced stomach cancer. They cannot afford her medicine; neither, on the other hand, can they afford her burial expenses, which would total, they estimate, nearly 30,000 pesos. Magnifico, with a touching mixture of tenderness and matter-of-fact resolution in the face of death, sets about trying to prepare for these expenses.

Despite a certain tendency, shared with most Filipino dramas, for the overwrought, I found the film deeply touching. The relationship between Magnifico and his little sister with cerebral palsy was particularly moving. The performances of Lorna Tolentino, Albert Martinez, and the remarkably resilient Gloria Romero, were all very well-done - filled with touching understatement rather than the unfortunately more familiar historionics of much Filipino drama.

Most poignant for me in the film was the way in which Philippine provincial life was captured in convincing detail. From the pervasive roar of tricycles and the competing tilaok of roosters to the fragmented stone and root stairs leading to their home to the tire strewn rusty corrugated tin roofs to the delightful chatter and noise of the palengke, Magnifico was, for me, a wonderfully accurate portrait of home.

Despite some minor problems with the film and an emotionally over-the-top ending, Blanche and I enjoyed Magnifico very much. It can be rented online through Netflix for those who might be interested.

Bear in mind, Blanche and I watched the film without English subtitles and I cannot vouch for their quality. In my experience, translated subtitles are frequently quite poor, but, given the overall quality of Magnifico, I would hope that that would not be the case with this film.

Benedict Anderson’s Under Three Flags: a review

Published on March 23, 2006 in Book review, Southeast Asia, History and Philippines. 0 Comments

Benedict Anderson, Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination (London: Verso, 2006).Under Three Flags

Benedict Anderson’’s recent work, Under Three Flags, explores connections between late nineteenth century nationalism, anarchism, anti-colonial movements and the cosmopolitan movements of polyglot intellectuals and their texts. Through the comparative juxtaposition of contemporary literature, anarchist terrorism, and the peregrinations of Philippine intellectuals, Anderson presents a portrait, a synchronic cross-section of early globalization in the 1890s. At the center of this book is the remarkable person of Jose Rizal. Rizal provides Anderson with an analytical point around which to constellate the dynamics of global anarchism; he is a person at once masterful and sympathetic, spanning the worlds of colonialism, nationalism, and political radicalism, above all in his production of multi-lingual texts. Rizal in his writing of his second novel, El Filibusterismo, Anderson argues, proleptically imagined anarchism’’s advent to the Philippines, and to the colonial world writ large. This anarchism in the wake of Rizal’’s death, and in part because of this death, arrived at the Philippines in the person of Isabelo de los Reyes and his Union Obrera Democratica.

Anderson’’s work reads as series of lapidary essays, brilliant in their brevity, but like many of his analogies, they lose something in the juxtaposition: explanatory force. His breadth of reading, occasional eloquence, and polyglot quotation of texts, I found to be frequent sources of tangential serendipitous discovery. Anderson’’s comparative methodology is often productive of reader inspiration quite outside the bounds of authorial intentionality. The sense of interconnected contemporaneity generated by Anderson’’s account, opened vistas on potentially fruitful research. There were numerous instances of the book producing ideas and potentially useful historical tangents. This much can be said positively; Anderson’’s comparative juxtapositions were in this sense productive. They were not, however, explanatory. There is a great gulf between the juxtaposition of seemingly portentious coincidences and the diachronic tracing of causality. Anderson never leaves the realm of the former.

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